


Paiiliing Practiice

by Laylah



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia, Alternia is Terrible, Awkwardness, Dystopia, F/M, First Time, Fuck Or Die, Knotting, Mutual Penetration, NPC Death, Sex Education, sex with strangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:23:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1921368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lights dim. The Imperial anthem comes on. The video screen lights up with the title of the cinematic masterpiece you're about to be subjected to: An Adolescent's Guide to Correct Pailing Procedure, Featuring Anatomical Diagrams of External Genitalia, Three-Dimensional Modeling Simulations of the Interior Workings of a Successful Coupling, and a Live Demonstration of Appropriate Technique by Two Patriotic Volunteers.</p>
<p>It isn't any better this time than it was when you watched it in the privacy of your own hive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paiiliing Practiice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trombonesonmars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trombonesonmars/gifts).



> I swear I wanted to write every single one of your prompts. So many delicious things! Nowhere near enough time to write.

TA: aa ii can't do thii2.  
AA: 0h c0me 0n s0llux. y0u can tw0.  
TA: heh. 2eriiou2ly though, ii'm not kiiddiing, ii can't go iin there.  
AA: d0 y0u really want t0 be remembered as that guy wh0 g0t culled running away fr0m pailing practice 0_0  
TA: of cour2e not  
TA: ii ju2t really hate thii2, ii wii2h you were here.  
AA: y0u can pretend i'm watching if that w0uld help  
TA: oh my god, aa.  
AA: 0u0  
TA: ok they're openiing the door2, ii have two go.  
AA: g00d luck! y0u'll be fine.

You don't have AA's confidence in that at all, but you put away your palmhusk and straighten out of your slouch a little as the crowd starts filtering into the training ship. It's probably for the best she isn't here, when officially you're pale. You can't help feeling two ways about people all the time, but the Empire doesn't care about feelings.

Thus the training ship.

You go left with the rest of the lowbloods, a regulation 40 of you tromping into the instruction block. There's a viewscreen and rows of chairs set up, and the grotesque knot that is your bilesac loosens a little at the temporary reprieve.You file into a seat between a big brownblood with long hair and a pair of rusts who are holding hands.

The instructor is teal, and her boots ring crisply against the floor as she strides in. "Good evening, conscripts, and congratulations on making it this far. You may yet live to serve in )(er Imperious Condescension's glorious fleet, if you're capable of following simple directions."

You hope her self-righteousness gland ruptures messily.

"Every batch that comes through this facility has a few sniveling grubs who've ignored this entire topic throughout their schoolfeeding process, and despite that hideous neglect some of them might have useful contributions to make. So you all get to watch the instructional materials in full before we move on to," she smiles nastily, "the fun part."

The lights dim. The Imperial anthem comes on. The video screen lights up with the title of the cinematic masterpiece you're about to be subjected to: An Adolescent's Guide to Correct Pailing Procedure, Featuring Anatomical Diagrams of External Genitalia, Three-Dimensional Modeling Simulations of the Interior Workings of a Successful Coupling, and a Live Demonstration of Appropriate Technique by Two Patriotic Volunteers.

It isn't any better this time than it was when you watched it in the privacy of your own hive. Worse, actually, because you can't skip anything: the patriotic volunteers are a cerulean and a yellow, and you hate the part where the yellow starts crying. If you had been the sort of loser to get a wiggly over Three-Dimensional Modeling Simulations of the Interior Workings of a Successful Coupling (and you're not; you've poked that modeling software and all you can think about is how clumsy the code is), you would have lost it again by the time the actual bucket hit the floor.

When the lights come back up you're hunched halfway into a grub curl, and straighten yourself back out of it as fast as you can. You glance around at the other conscripts, and at least a few of them don't look any better than you feel. This sucks.

"Look alive, grubs," the instructor says. She likes her job too much. "That was your mission briefing. Now let's see how you perform! Those of you who showed up with your potential matesprits may pair up with them. The rest of you have two minutes to find partners. Remember, this is a practice run only, so there are no consequences for a poor slurry mix."

Because that makes this whole thing better, right? Just a fun fucking night in the park, no consequences for a poor slurry mix. The rustbloods on your right clearly showed up as a pair. You look to your left.

"Um," the brownblood says. "Hi."

"Hi," you say, smooth and charming as Troll Casanova, if Troll Casanova were a lispy lowblood fuckup with no musculature to speak of. The brownblood is like twice your size, maybe three times, and you sort of want to beg off based on that alone but _most_ people here are bigger than you and what if everyone else is already pairing up and you have to come back to her anyway and she's mad that you tried to ditch her and you are _the worst at this_ , fuck.

She smiles at you hopefully. "I'm Capria," she says. "Capria Hedrun."

"Sollux Captor," you say, and blush like you're radioactive because that was such an over-the-top arrogant thing to call yourself and it probably sounds ridiculous when you're a weedy little breakable douche in person and you can't even show off your actual skills for fear of impoundment and reassignment to a helm.

Capria doesn't give you any shit, though. She just shrugs one shoulder, the universal sign of what-can-you-do? "I guess we're it, huh?"

You nod. "I guess," you say. Apart from being big enough to be a serious threat to life and limb—you bet she'll be in one of the shock troop corps—she's pretty, round-faced and curvy in contrast with your pathetic scrawniness. Her hair falls in curls at least halfway down her back, and the horns rising out of it are sturdy, sweeping out and backward. You could do a lot worse. You hope she thinks the same of you.

"All paired up? Good." The instructor presses a button on the wall. "This way. Find a station and engage your partner."

You get up from your seat. Capria takes your hand.

The live practice area is one big open space, with concupiscent platforms spaced out evenly, four rows of five. The platforms are totally plain, just flat surfaces with bucket wells installed. You can't help but wonder if the highblood cadre get conditions like this too. You doubt it.

"You care which spot?" Capria asks.

"This way," you say, heading straight for the far row. You aren't quite fast enough to get the corner, but at least you get one of the edge spots. The fewer people subjected to the revolting spectacle of your carcass, the better.

You kneel on the platform. It is at least soft enough to spare your bony knees. Capria sits down beside you, staring at you nervously. She huffs a little breath upward, making a stray curl of hair fly up and then flop right back down on her forehead. "Okay," she says. "Okay." She starts pulling up the hem of her shirt.

You make a really dumb-sounding noise because wow okay this is happening and you're not ready and that doesn't matter, and Capria gets her shirt off without a snag. She's wearing a really racy sphere-support harness, lace-edged and white, and god, why didn't you dress nicer? Why don't you _own_ any sexy underwear? For all the good it would do. You definitely don't have rumble spheres like that, round and heavy, the kind that make you want to burrow close and hold on.

When you manage to drag your eyes upward a few inches you realize there's a really nasty scar on her left shoulder, like something bit down and tried to take a chunk out of her. Your bloodpusher twinges. Your junk starts to come out of lockdown.

"You too?" she asks.

"I'm not much to look at," you say. You're trying to hide between your own shoulders like a stupid shellbeast. 

"Well, we're. We're going for red, right?" she asks. You wince, because it feels so _tawdry_ to be showing off your inadequacies in the hopes of fast-tracking pity in a stranger, and Capria ducks her head. "Sorry! Sorry, I suck at this, I mean, there's a reason I don't have somebody already lined up."

"Ehehe, you're kind of talking to the king of romantic failure right here, so. So. Let's do this." You whip your shirt off, closing your eyes so you won't have to see her disappointment when she gets a look at you. Your thoracic bonestruts stand out like a melodic percussion instrument, and you wouldn't say you have rumble spheres so much as you have rumble _buttons_ , little nubs too small to even develop a curve.

She touches your arm and you jump, startled into opening your eyes. "Okay so far?" she asks.

You nod. "Sorry. I'm making you do all the work." You shift closer, put one unsteady hand on the curve of her waist. She's pretty, and she's just as nervous as you are, and that should be enough to get you going, right?

A loud slap from the other side of the room startles you out of concentrating. "What the fuck?" someone demands.

"Conscript! Where the fresh fuck do you think you're going?"

You can't help looking. The instructor is pacing toward one of the other students, some dumb kid whose shirt hangs open and who's backing toward the door. "I'm not doing it!" the kid says. "I'm not, this is a farce and it's disgusting!"

"You will _get back on that platform and do your duty_ , conscript, or you are not fit to be a part of this Empire!"

"There's no point to this! It's just fucking humiliation!" The kid's voice echoes in your head just a second before the words reach your ears and you're going to be sick: "Fuck you and fuck your empire!"

Capria takes your face in both hands, physically turning you away as the instructor's knives come out. "Don't look," she says urgently, "don't look," and AA would tell you the same thing, you're sure, but AA wouldn't sound terrified about it. You look Capria in the eyes and see your own panic reflected back at you, the plain and awful truth that you have no choice.

You kiss her as the screaming starts.

Her arms lock tight around your waist and you bury your fingers in her hair and you're alive, for now, and that's all the reassurance anyone ever gets. That was such a fucking pointless way to go and you can smell blood and you're shaking, but Capria's fingers trail up and down your spine and your nook throbs. You kiss her harder, your stupid teeth clicking against hers. When you get your hands up to her horns and rub the beds, she sighs, this gentle, surrendering sound that makes you dilate further.

"I think," you say, like a tool, "blind unreasoning terror might be more of a turn-on than I was led to believe it was."

"Need to take your pants off?" Capria asks, and then blushes almost golden. "I mean."

"No, that's kind of where I was going with that," you say, and it's easier to admit it when she's embarrassed too and this is good, think about dumb little problems like this and not the dead kid on the other side of the room.

You glance over there reflexively anyway as you shove your jeans down. The instructor is kissing the dead kid's partner, apparently taking over for the suicidal idiot on the practice front. It's not often that you'd rather be you than someone else, but this is one of those times.

You look back at Capria in time to see her skirt puddle on the floor. She has scrapes and bruises on her legs, the kind a troll gets—you assume—from going outside and _doing things_ instead of sitting in front of a husktop all night. They're nice legs, though.

She tries to tuck them under herself when she sees you looking. "Sorry. I know I'm kind of a wreck."

"We're still going for red, right?" you say. It's kind of nice that you're both fuckups at this. "Besides, what I was thinking was that you're hot."

"Oh." She straightens up a little like that possibility hadn't occurred to her, or something, and it's kind of cute. "Well. I like your eyes."

Your face gets hot. "They're weird." You can hear AA laughing at you from here. "Thanks, I guess."

In the awkward moment that follows, you're way too conscious of the rest of the conscripts around you—movement out of the corner of your eye, the hushed and nervous voices, the chirp of someone who's closer to succeeding than the rest of you. Capria's slit is dilated just enough for you to see the color of her bulge, which is about how you're doing, too, and is reassuring but not enough to get you through this.

So you crawl back over there, into her arms. You want to apologize for your everything, but that seems like it would be trying too hard. And Capria makes a tentative purr as she pulls you close, so maybe you don't need to. A little squirming gets you lined up so your slits align, and when you rock your hips a jolt of heat runs through your core. Capria whimpers.

"Shit," you say, "sorry, are you okay, did I fuck it up," and she kisses you just for a second, like a circuit interrupt.

"It's just... intense?" she says. "I'm sorry, I know I have to troll up and do it, it's just."

You dare a glance over at the instructor and her unlucky partner. "I think we've got time," you say. No matter how terrifying the instructor is, you don't think she can come around to review everyone's technique while she's knot-deep in that kid. "We can work up to it, if that helps?"

Capria nods. "Thanks, Sollux. I'm glad you agreed to be my partner."

You duck your head. "It's bad enough without being jerks to each other," you explain to her rumble spheres. You don't really know where to go from here. "Uh."

"You could touch me some more?" she suggests. "That's nice."

You try running your nails up and down her back, slow and gentle, and that makes her sigh. She might relax a little toward you. You keep one hand on her back and slide the other around to find her grubscar, dimpling the flesh of her side. You bite your tongue to keep from apologizing again for your comparatively pathetic physique, and instead just touch, tracing the seam where scar meets skin.

"Oh," Capria breathes. She nuzzles your throat, nips your earlobe, makes you shiver. You tease her scars, learn her body with careful claws, and she maps your tender places with her mouth. When her hips shift against you for the first time, friction against your dilating slit and the exposed fraction of your bulge, it feels like a beautiful victory.

Then it feels dizzying, as your fluids and hers come into contact and biology finally deigns to lend a frond to the proceedings. You press against her, and your bulge shifts inside you, twisting into position to emerge. The chirp that spills from your throat on your next breath makes you blush.

But she answers you with a trill, and the tip of her bulge slips out to drag against your flesh, and you are think you _going to die_ that's so amazing. Logic catches up to hyperbole a second later: you are _not_ going to die, which is even better. You tighten all the muscles of your lower abdomen, as much of a flex as you can, to get the tip of your own bulge to emerge and touch hers.

That's glorious, thrilling, her skin and fluids stimulating in all the ways that your own hand isn't. You both unsheathe further, smoothly, curling around each other. The relief you feel is like when you finish a ridiculously difficult platforming section in a game: sure, there's still a boss fight ahead, but you managed to not die for an incredibly stupid reason.

"Nnh," Capria says, and also, "a-ahhh," which makes you feel pretty good about yourself. You nuzzle into the warm hollow of her throat. You're moving into the stage where your bodies don't need a lot of input from your higher reasoning centers anymore, which is equal parts easier and more upsetting. It's great that instincts can help you out here and everything, but your higher reasoning centers are your best feature and you'd like them to have a vote. Even though basically the only reasonable vote is _sure, go for it, let's not die messily and stupidly._

Your bulge finally slips out all the way, so that the hooks at the base can interlock with Capria's. Her breath stutters.

"Y-yeah," you agree, and, "wow, fuck," for good measure. You press as close to her as you can, skin-on-skin for the full length of your scrawny torso, her rumble spheres a pillowy comfort. You spread your legs a little and try to focus on relaxing, which is fucking stupid and counterintuitive but when Capria's bulge touches your nook it zaps the tension right out of you, almost literally. Your throat locks in a trill as she slides into you, slick and smooth and so much easier than it's ever been to get your fingers up there.

When your bulge finds _her_ nook, she trembles all over, clinging to you as if you are in any way qualified to be anyone's life preservation device. But fuck, she's so soft inside, warm and slick and easily the most perfect thing your bulge has ever felt. You start to swell almost as soon as you're deep enough in her nook for the knot to hold. 

A minute later you notice that you can feel her knotting up inside you, too—and that's _weird_ , wow, that feeling of building pressure. But it's the good sort of weird, pressing into your globes, setting off little chain-reactions through all the nerves of your junk. Capria moans, this almost relieved sound, and heat blooms inside you. That's her material, fuck, you're actually doing it, you're getting pailed right this second. Your globes throb in response to the start of her release, doing their part. Now if you can just—

Your bulge gets the memo at last and you start to release, the first rippling pulses of your material spilling into Capria's nook. You understand the relieved noise, because that's exactly how you feel, too, relaxing into her embrace with a soft _Oh_ to ride it out. You'll have plenty of time to ponder the differences between playing with yourself for the sensation and actually coupling; your material releases slowly, in waves, and you'll stay knotted together until your bodies are both convinced you've done all you can. You breathe, slowly, shivering through her second pulse. After all the nerve-wracking bullshit of getting to this point, this almost feels meditative.

_Prehistoric trolls would fertilize each other by this method and retain the developing eggs until they were ready to hatch_ , the instructional video says in your head. _Thanks to our evolved symbiosis with the Mother Grub, trolls no longer have to incubate the developing eggs themselves. You'll be able to return to normal activities within a night or two of your contribution._

_However, copulation itself is still crucial! Your material needs to be exposed to the hormone-rich environment of your partner's nook in order to be fertile._

"What are you thinking about?" Capria asks, and you realize you've just been sitting there doing nothing from the waist up. 

"Oh god." You are the most embarrassing disaster, it is you. "The stupid fucking video."

"Me too," she says. "The model, with the fountain—"

"The slurry fountain," you agree, thumping your forehead on her shoulder.

"The little angry emotion lines," she says. " _Remember that heightened emotions increase hormone levels, so do your best to provoke your partner to hate or pity while you are making your deposit!_ "

" _The strength of the empire depends on you_!" you say, and then you're both laughing, softly, hopelessly, at the totally absurd idea of the monstrous, bloodthirsty machine of the empire depending on you for anything.

You sit up straighter to look her in the eyes and she's still smiling but she's crying, too. You do like the fucking video and kiss her tears and it makes you hurt inside, low and sweet, the way her lashes flutter, the way you understand exactly what's wrong and there's no way to fix it. She kisses your mouth and wipes the tears off your cheek, holy shit, when did _you_ start crying? 

You don't want to let go, don't think you would even if your bodies would let you. You bury your hands in Capria's hair just for the feel of it around your fingers, smooth and heavy. Your bloodpusher aches for her, for the fact that she had to come out here alone to this miserable fucking farce. The dead kid was right and you all know it, but most of you just decided this wasn't the terrain feature you wanted to die on: what's one more indignity on top of everything else in your sorry, imperially-owned lives?

By the time you've emptied into each other completely, you've progressed from desperate kisses to nuzzling and cooing. You'd feel like a moron, except that it's actually really nice? And obviously _she's_ not a moron, so logic dictates that you're probably not one for doing the same things she's doing.

"Um," you say as your bulge starts to relax. You should have knelt over the bucket receptacle in the first place; it would make this moment a lot less awkward.

"Oh," she says, her eyes going wide in an honestly super cute expression of dismay. You shouldn't be thinking about how cute it is. You still need to get an acceptable quantity of this stuff from your bodies to the actual _pail_ for it to count as a success. And that's only going to get harder as you retract enough to start leaking. "If... if you hold on, I can try to sit up..."

You touch her mouth, your fingertips against her lips, gentle. "I got this," you say. It's a show of trust, since technically you got your records to say that you have the psionic aptitude of last season's game grubs—you don't want to run the risk of being brought in for helm-suitability testing—but you don't think she'll have reason to review them and bring up the inaccuracy. You don't think she _would_ bring up the inaccuracy.

You're as careful as you can be, trying to keep your power usage as low as possible as you lift both of you back to an upright position. Capria's eyes widen a little. "Tingles," she says.

"Sorry." Fuck. Did you fuck this up again? "I don't mean to, it just—"

Her turn to put her fingertips over your mouth, and despite yourself you smile weakly. "It's fine," she says. "Almost there."

"Yeah." You shuffle over to brace yourselves over the bucket. Your knees keep bumping into each other and there's a trickle of slurry running down the inside of your thigh, gross. But you get there in time, and when Capria's bulge retracts the slurry floods out of you and splashes into the pail. You feel...like you need an ablution trap pretty badly, yeah, but also _empty_ , hollow where you're not carrying your own material around anymore or hers either. Your body will make more, obviously, but in the meantime it's weird.

You sit on the platform together, staring at each other a little muzzily. You should put your clothes back on. In a minute. When you can move.

So of course the instructor comes striding over to check on you before you manage, and if you needed any incentive for your junk to seal itself up tight again, that was it. Your spine stiffens. Capria shifts—closer to you?

The instructor peers into your filled pail. She's already crisp and presentable again somehow; she must have ruined that kid. "Hmm," she says. Your nape prickles nervously. "Did you come here as a pair?"

"No," Capria says. She fumbles for your hand and you squeeze her fingers. It'll be okay, right? You did the thing. "Why?"

"See for yourselves." The instructor nods at the bucket and you actually look at the contents.

You're expecting something like the swirl in the middle of a barkspice dessert loaf, only messier, less of a neat spiral. Two distinct shades. A completely blended color is the ideal to aim for, but it takes a real quadrant, a serious connection, to get material to combine that thoroughly. Yours and Capria's isn't doing that, but it's... smeary. Her brown is clear in some spots, your yellow in others, but there's also a lot of in-between.

"If you don't already have your flush quadrants filled, you might want to consider a second date." The instructor _winks_ at you, of all the awful things. You blush hot enough that you must be rerouting all your remaining bodily fluids to your face. "You never know where serendipity's going to strike."

You _so_ don't believe in serendipity. But you do believe in avoiding preventable culling, so you say, "Thanks for the advice. I, uh. Don't have anyone lined up, really."

That last part is for Capria, who's blushing probably almost as hard as you are. "Me neither," she says. "So."

"Right." You haven't let go of her hand. She hasn't tried to take it back, either.

You are a disaster and a fuckup, and serendipity doesn't exist, but all the same. This was supposed to be awful and parts of it weren't, and that's Capria's fault. 

"Sure," you say. "A second date would be okay."

**Author's Note:**

> Both of Capria's names are goat allusions, because Sollux with girls who headbutt things will never not be cute. "Capria" is pretty obvious; "Hedrun" is a trollified version of Heiðrún, the magical doe in Valhalla who gives mead instead of milk.


End file.
